Huge melodrama from Nicholas Ray, this film is absolutely bizarre. I don't know what cortisone really does, other than the fact that it's a steroid, but I can't imagine it's really quite like this. This feels libelous. Not that I give a damn about cortisone, but it just startled me, is all. The whole film is over-the-top, and perhaps that's how they got away with it. It's also vicious.

From education to religion to the patriarchal breadwinner role, everything about the nuclear family is depicted here as poisonous. Ray has nothing but contempt for these institutions, it seems from this film, as he comes very close to stating outright that they are equivalent to psychosis. It's blunt and loud, but…

Proto-Lynchian melodrama about the toxicity of the American dream. To all appearances, James Mason has the perfect life: a family, a home, a job. But there's something eating away at him. Like he says, "we're all dull," but this dullness is killing us. In order to support this life, he has to work two jobs, so when he develops a mysterious mental illness it all starts to come crashing down and we see what fragile foundation this world was built upon. The only way to live in the modern world is to go crazy: you either kill yourself trying to make a living, or you go insane trying to keep yourself alive.

No films other than my two favorites Taxi Driver and Stalker have I loved as much as Bigger Than Life after my first viewing. All are true love on first sight, but is this a sign that Bigger Than Life will grow to rank among Taxi Driver and Stalker? Honestly I doubt it, despite how amazing I found it to be, and how it became an instant favorite for me and an instant all-time classic in my mind, I don't see it as having the stuff for me to consider the best of the best. Regardless, let there be no hesitation in allowing this to be called a member of the best, as it truly is one of them.

Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life showcases some of the finest examples of melodrama put to the screen, perhaps some of the most heartfelt possible. Given the time, it's impressive how Nicholas Ray goes about with his portrait of drug addiction, as what's offered is not only one of the most impressive examples of melodrama, but an understanding of the human condition with some of the most care put into the handling of emotion. It may be said a million other times, but I don't care for it simply fits in describing such a wonderful film like this, "They simply don't make them like this anymore." Ray never felt shy enough going behind Bigger Than Life and it is most evident…

Bigger Than Life is another great Nicholas Ray film that examines the nuclear family while questioning domesticity and the American dream. James Mason delivers an outstanding performance in this melodramatic tale about the toxicity of suburbia. It takes your breath away with its striking cinematography enhanced by its use of Technicolor and CinemaScope, and wicked shadows ten feet tall.

Nicholas Ray delivers a strange melodrama about a man who has a good, if somewhat financially poor, life who must go on an experimental drug to save his life that ends up ruining it. Okay, some of this film is great, but I think it just goes a little too far in execution. Mason’s performance is grounded for the most part, but, in the third act, his mania just gets silly. I’m alos confused as to how much of a condemnation of the 50s idea of life this is. On the one hand everything is allowed to become horrible because his wife feels she cannot do anything. On the other hand, it seems to place the fault of his mania on the pills... However, as expected from Ray, the film is gorgeous, and I also like the grounded nuance that is provided by the end.

Ray working in the full glory of color and cinemascope is something to behold. The frame can barely contain the suburban fever dream that unfolds in the confines of the model 50s American household. Ray’s previous subjects have explored the the monsters looming in the day-to-day agony of existence, and that thread becomes much more literal here as the poisonous institutions that make up Mason’s character turn him into a sort of middle class Godzilla, tearing down the false myths and comforts of that lifestyle. It’s all very violent and horrific, much more than a typical family melodrama would normally be. It's obvious that, to Ray, they go hand in hand. This is what lies beneath.